Saturday, 2 January 1864

The inactivity that had marked the end of last year was still continuing into this one. A major reason for this was a massive cold front which had come down for a visit from Canada, and subjected such Southern towns as Cairo, Illinois and Memphis, Tennessee, to temperatures far below freezing. All the way to the Gulf of Mexico thermometers and people were subjected to uncommon frigidity. The only military action that was even proposed was a plan put forth by United States Naval Secretary Gideon Welles for a joint Army-Navy attack on Wilmington, North Carolina. This notion made it as far as the desk of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who sent it to Major General Henry Halleck. Halleck vetoed the whole idea on the grounds that all the armies were busy or too far away, and therefore, he could not provide sufficient manpower for the project.

Major General Stephen A. Hurlbut, Army commander at Memphis, wired Secretary Welles: "The Tennessee at Mobile will be ready for sea in twenty days. She is a dangerous craft. Buchanan thinks more so than the Merrimac. Commander Robert Townsend reported the seizure of steamer Ben Franklin in the lower Mississippi River 'for flagrant violation of the Treasury Regulations'..."